What is the proper way to determine if an object is a bytes-like object in Python?

Question

I have code that expects str but will handle the case of being passed bytes in the following way:

if isinstance(data, bytes):
    data          


        

Answer 1

You can use:

isinstance(data, (bytes, bytearray))

Due to the different base class is used here.

>>> bytes.__base__

>>> bytearray.__base__

To check bytes

>>> by = bytes()
>>> isinstance(by, basestring)
True

However,

>>> buf = bytearray()
>>> isinstance(buf, basestring)
False

The above codes are test under python 2.7

Unfortunately, under python 3.4, they are same....

>>> bytes.__base__

>>> bytearray.__base__